Gourmet Thanksgiving Dinner

I just finished packing the trunk of our car to the brim with leftovers and kitchen supplies. Since Bryn never does anything by half-measures, he had brought almost the contents of our entire kitchen with us to Yakima on Wednesday. After our early morning multi-hour drive out here, he baked bread and brined the turkeys and did other things while I spent the day working on a school paper. Then, yesterday he and I spent the entire day in the kitchen (with assistants at various times for prepwork and cleaning) and finally got dinner served at 7pm. I got to play sous chef all afternoon/evening. I'm not even going to try and list the menu except to say that Bryn planned it all out based on flavors, everything was made from scratch, and there was a TON of food. And since most of the people we were serving had gone off of weight-loss plans for the holiday, they didn't want all of the leftovers sitting around. So I think I'm going to be eating leftovers for a week unless we can convince some friends to come over and help us!

This morning, I woke up already exhausted from the day before. Now that the car is mostly packed, all we have to do is gather our last things and drive home and unload the car and reorganize our kitchen. I'm crossing my fingers that I don't get called in to work this weekend, but having said that, I know it will be inevitable.

Still, it was a nice holiday spent with family and friends. Next year though, I am all for having Thanksgiving dinner made from prepackaged ingredients (stovetop stuffing, canned pumpkin, etc)!

Food Coma Induction

After a day at work on Monday I called Bryn on my way home to tell him to get ready as I was going to pick him up and we were going to go out for dinner. I didn't care where, I just wanted to go somewhere we don't usually go. Well, he settled on Olive Garden so we drove down to Westfield Shoppingtown Southcenter. (I like saying the whole thing because I grew up just going to Southcenter. Hell, my first job was at Southcenter! I don't recognize the place anymore!)

Anyhow, it had been a while since I'd been to Olive Garden. I'm not knocking the place, they do a great job at what they do. Which seems to be providing sleazy (good sleazy, not disgusting) pseudo-Italian food to the masses. Preferably in Claim Jumper quantities.

I was a little disturbed at the many people I saw walking out with paper shopping bags of leftovers while we were waiting for a table. And then we turned into those people. I've never left a restaurant before with a branded paper shopping bag filled with food containers. Unless I might have been getting an order to go. Granted, I didn't have to buy or make lunch yesterday. Plus we had a late night snack too. But I definitely was in a food coma when we left. My eyes were glazed over from too many carbs. They only other time I've experienced that was when Bryn and I went to Cracker Barrel on a trip to Virginia and I chose macaroni and cheese as one of my "vegetables." Seriously. I was so out of it that I made Bryn drive us home (both times).